My Carbon Footprint for 2013

This is the 45th post to this blog.

I have just completed the calculations for my carbon footprint for 2013. I now have a second person living in my home, so the numbers will not be directly comparable for the electricity use for the last several years. I am glad that the power use only went up by 32 percent.

I also did not use air travel at all this past year. That saved almost 1/2 ton from 2012. I did take a long road trip with Astro (my awesome dog) in the Celica. This added almost 9200 miles to my total for the year, but I do not know how I could be more efficient traveling with my dog.

There are only two small unknowns for this year. I used some propane for my camp stove, and I lit two campfires during my trip.

Here are my 2013 carbon calculations:
I used 1.22 lb/KWh for my house per Cotap.org, and I used 19.4 lb/gal for gas in my vehicles per the US Energy Information Administration.

My house:
3554 KWh = 4336 lb (this is an increase of 32% from 2012)

The 1997 Voyager van:
1252 mi, 58.33 gal (21.46 MPG) = 1131 lb (this is a decrease of 23% from 2012)

The 2000 Toyota Celica:
13731 mi, 362.3 gal (37.9 MPG) = 7028 lb (this is an increase of 62% from 2012)

The 2007 Honda Elite scooter:
4687 mi, 48.81 gal (96.0 MPG) = 947 lb (this is an increase of 90% from 2012)

The total:
13,442 pounds or 6.72 tons CO2.... an increase of 23% from 2012

I drove a lot in 2013, and this really increased my impact. My goal is to use my bike and public transportation much more in 2014.